Global Warming 101

Video found here, National Geographic.

What, precisely, is global warming? Global warming is the collection and retention of heat. Normally radiation comes from the sun, a small portion of which is absorbed by our atmosphere and land/water masses, but for the most part it is deflected back into space, keeping our Earth at a temperature that allows the environment to remain livable by plants and animals, more importantly it keeps our climate system in check. But what is causing the Earth to retain so much heat? They're called Greenhouse Gases:

On Earth, the major greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36–70 percent of the greenhouse effect (not including clouds); carbon dioxide (CO2), which causes 9–26 percent; methane (CH4), which causes 4–9 percent; and ozone, which causes 3–7 percent.[19][20] The issue is how the strength of the greenhouse effect changes when human activity increases the atmospheric concentrations of some greenhouse gases.

What the Greenhouse Gases do is let the heat radiation in, but not out, thus warming the Earth. There are several major problems that can stem from this warming, the first and most obvious is that it melts the major arctic regions across the Earth. As Al Gore demonstrated in his film An Inconvenient Truth, when the ice melts in the ice shelves, the water puddles don't refreeze, instead they continue to melt, all the way to the water beneath. What this does is is make a series of holes in the ice, which makes it weak, and causes large chunks of ice to break off from the main mass into the sea. What's the importance of the ice caps? Well the ice arctic regions in our world provide a placenta to multiple species of animals, as well as keeping the environment in check. At first it was estimated that the ice caps would last until 2100, despite global warming, but scientists are now estimating that they will be completely gone by 2030. What will this do? Well it will submerge millions of acres of land, and throw our entire climate out of whack.
In recent years (approximately the last 50) we've witnessed the highest amount of climate change in recorded history. What does this do? Well for one thing is causes more droughts in dry regions and can cause higher amounts of climate phenomena such as hurricanes. In recent years we've seen a very high amount of hurricanes and tornadoes, whether this is caused by global warming remains to be seen, but they've gotten bigger and heavier as the years go on. Global warming is causing our oceans to get warmer, and whether a hurricane starts as a big one, once it hits warm patches of water it speeds up and gets bigger. To conclude this article global warming causes hating of the Earth, which melts ice, which can kill species and change the climate system, and currents, which can cause strange changes in the way the climate works.

-Remix Theory